The year 2008 in Ukraine was marked by fractious disputes between parliamentary leaders and Pres. Viktor Yushchenko. In September the parliamentary alliance between the president’s Our Ukraine–People’s Self-Defense bloc and the prime minister’s eponymous Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc collapsed. The ostensible reason was the divided response to the war that broke out in Georgia in August. Whereas Yushchenko condemned Russia’s presence in Georgia and reportedly authorized military aid to Georgian Pres. Mikhail Saakashvili, Yuliya Tymoshenko took a neutral position and met with Russian Pres. Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on October 3. A second reason concerned efforts by Tymoshenko and rival political leader Viktor Yanukovych of the Regions Party to reduce the power of the president via a constitutional amendment. The impasse was resolved in early December by the formation of a new parliamentary coalition that included members of Yushchenko’s and Tymoshenko’s blocs, as well as delegates supporting Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn.

Ukrainian Pres. Viktor Yushchenko (centre) and his daughters place candles during a service in Kiev …

Mykhailo Markiv—Pool/AP

At the NATO summit in Bucharest in early April, membership for Ukraine was supported by U.S. Pres. George W. Bush but opposed by Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Moreover, Russia warned that Ukrainian entry into NATO would seriously strain relations between the two countries. A second summit in Brussels in December resolved to delay further any talk of Ukrainian membership.

Apart from the NATO question, relations between Ukraine and Russia grew increasingly tense. The Russian natural-gas monopoly Gazprom demanded that Ukraine repay debts totaling $2 billion for gas imports. After talks between the countries failed, Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine on Jan. 1, 2009. In November Medvedev declined an invitation from Yushchenko to attend commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, the 1932–33 famine in which several million Ukrainians died. Russia rejected Ukraine’s characterization of the famine as a genocide carried out by Soviet authorities.

As 2008 drew to a close, the worldwide financial crisis had a devastating impact on Ukraine. In November the economy shrank by more than 14%. The metallurgical industry, which had accounted for almost 30% of GDP, suffered a 50% drop in production that month. In December it was estimated that Ukraine’s GDP had increased by just over 2% during the year—a marked slowdown. Unemployment was on the rise, and on December 23, trade unionists demonstrated in Kiev to protest wage cuts and increasing food prices.

At year’s end inflation stood at 22%. Ukraine’s central bank had stepped in to try to halt a dramatic decline in the value of the national currency, the hryvnya, whose exchange rate had fallen from around 5 to 7.88 hryvnyas per $1 by late December. The bank spent well over a quarter of its total currency reserves of $37 billion to try to buoy the hryvnya. Much of the initial tranche of a $16.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund also was used toward stabilizing the currency. Tymoshenko maintained that members of the president’s inner circle, including gas tycoon Dmytro Firtash, had speculated against the hryvnya; she also demanded the resignation of the head of the central bank, Volodymyr Stelmakh, on similar grounds.

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